American Everyday: A symposium celebrating the overlooked in fashion
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 a group of international fashion scholars convened at Columbia College in Chicago for American Everyday: Resistance, Revolution & Transformation, a symposium “inviting participants to think beyond the constructs of high fashion and haute couture”. Research, publications, and even fashion archives, are largely centered on a small cannon of fashion movements, and of designers whose names are known beyond academic circles. However, to really understand the way that fashion shapes our culture, and vice-versa, it is in the everyday fashion experience that we can find patterns and glean insights about who we are, who we were, and who we will be.
The themes ranged from “Fashion Systems” to “Everyday Bodies,” were an opportunity to look more intimately at many definitions of the fashion experience. Organizers Lauren Peters (Columbia College) and Hazel Clark (Parsons The New School for Design) expressed being overwhelmed by the response to their call for proposals. What was intended to be a single track event turned into a multi-track conference with close to 50 papers being presented. From the audience, having to choose between tracks during the three time slots was a challenge — no matter what, we were going to miss something we hoped to see. However, if we think about the collective knowledge that was shared and transferred, it was a benefit to us all to have so many ideas and research areas presented.
Who Controls The Past, Controls the Future. Who Controls the Present, Controls the Past. – George Orwell
A theme throughout the papers was how difficult it can be to find the information necessary for a thorough study. This can be a result of incomplete or inaccurate cataloging, a lack of surviving works or contemporary materials and documentation, and even our cultural value system in relation to these artifacts. For example, Eta Heintz, a designer who made a significant contribution during her time practicing design, but is more or less lost to history except for a few examples that only allow a shallow understanding of her body of work, as documented in contemporary press clippings. It signals the importance of collecting and cataloguing objects with contextual information in real time, to preserve the moment as much as the object itself. An excellent example of how effective this can be was in Eve Townsend’s research into the Schreiner Jewelry Company, often showing the finished jewelry next to the mold that created it, the advertisement it was featured in, and an editorial showing how it rendered on the body, and with the fashion of the time.
While it is becoming more common practice to collect contemporary products in anticipation of their retrospective siginificance, there is still resistance when it comes to certain objects which cary social stigma (the breast pump at MoMA, for example). It is encouraging to see art museums displaying banal, everyday products as design objects in their own right (Design for Different Futures, Philadelpha Museum of Art, Virgil Abloh at Chicago’s MCA). The use of social media came up as another way for researchers to engage with a contemporary conversation, and to share historical context.
The impact of this in depth survey of Everyday Fashion will hopefully be a call for continued research in the area, and improved systems to facilitate and support that research. One example being the inconsistency of cataloguing fashion objects with racist imagery or motifs. Not only does it become difficult to search for these objects, but their role in the conversation might be misconstrued. We can be hopeful that a concentrated research interest on fashion and fashion expereinces of the everyday will inspire collection managers and acquisitions to protect and preserve a critical mass of documentation, and to thoroughly contextualize these items in their collection in a searchable way. This will not only allow researchers to find far-flung examples in collections around the world, but it will help museums better communicate the narratives they have at their fingertips.
I was thrilled to be involved in the event and to learn from and connect with many new colleagues. I’m sure anyone you ask you have a different experience, since there were so many different ways to experience the event. Please do explore the program and the research being done by the scholars and researchers who shared their work.
See the full agenda here
